Ontario promises to pay for ripping out bike lanes that fail unannounced criteria | Globalnews.ca
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The Ford government is putting new bike lanes and any installed in the past half-decade on notice but has promised it will pay the costs if cities have to tear out routes.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/21139835

The Ford government is promising to pay the cost of removing bike lanes from major city streets that fail to meet its unannounced criteria as it ploughs ahead with a plan to limit biking infrastructure and rip out some routes.

  • FaceDeer
    -9•1 month ago

    Not necessarily. In my home city a few years back there was a big initiative to install bike lanes, city council was proudly declaring “X kilometers of bike lanes installed.” Turns out that was literally the only metric they cared about, the number of kilometers they could announce, and as a result the lanes were added wherever it was easiest and cheapest to turn an existing road lane into a bike lane. Most of them weren’t being used, they were just wasting space. An election or two later a major study was done and many of the bike lanes were turned back into car lanes again.

    They should be clear about the criteria, but if a similar situation has happened it makes sense to roll some of it back.

    • @NotMyOldRedditName
      4•1 month ago

      Over here in Victoria, people have been complaining non stop since the start of putting in protected bike lanes. We have a really good connected network now, but at the start when the first lane went in, there was such an uproar about this useless short lane that went nowhere before the network had even been built. It was pretty amusing to watch the idiots speak out like that about the short lane.

      • FaceDeer
        2•1 month ago

        In our case the lanes were in for quite a few years. As I mentioned, we cycled through a couple of city councils before enough of the politicians that had spearheaded the initiative were gone and the new ones could do a study without feeling like their reputations were on the line.

        And I should note, for those who are downvoting me, that I’m simply describing what happened. I ride my bike, I like bike lanes, but if bike lanes get put in bad places then popular support for bike lanes in general is harmed. If you like bike lanes too then you should be advocating for them to be placed where it’s optimal for bike lanes to exist, not to place them in every possible location regardless of utility.